My door opens, interrupting my meeting, but when I see Mia’s face, I know it’s for a good reason. Or a bad reason, judging by the complete lack of color in her cheeks. “Mia? What’s wrong?”

I ask the question, uncertain if I want to know the answer because I’m not sure I can handle anything else today. Normally, that’d make me feel like an absolute weakling to admit, even to myself. Hell, mostly to myself and my demon. But it’s noticeably quiet, and I’m a bit emotionally spent. Understandable, I suppose, after my morning session with my new therapist had drained so much out of me.

Dr. Culvington has helped me make some rather quick strides in just a few appointments. He’s a former military guy and suffers from PTSD, and the help he received led him to become a therapist himself. His approach today was pretty aggressive too, which suits me.

“Okay, Thomas. Give me the basics of what you know is fucked up and we’ll go from there.”

“Uh, I don’t usually . . .” His eagle eye had glared at me, making me feel like I was in boot camp and my choices were pushups or spilling my guts. While the pushups sounded easier, that was exactly the point, so I took a big breath and went the harder route. “Mom cheated and killed herself while I watched cartoons in the other room, Dad lost his shit, abused me my whole life, I worked my ass off in spite of him, not to spite him. Got my degree and started a successful company, but his voice is in my ear, still beating me down at every opportunity. I need it to shut the fuck up. I want to be better. There’s a woman. I love her.”

I’d never summarized everything that succinctly before, and when Dr. Culvington had smiled, I felt like I’d already accomplished something.

And ever since, we’ve been making strides. He knows about voices, said he had a few of his own too after a rough tour, so he’s taught me some helpful tricks for shutting them up. Mostly, to ignore them as much as possible to lessen their influence, challenge with positive messages, and while it makes me feel silly, to actively praise myself in my head. The awkward ‘atta-boys’ are weird as hell, but Culvington says I need to create a new methodology for my inner monologue, give it new messages to repeat.

The memory helps me gird my mental loins, so to speak, so that when my inner voice pops up upon seeing Mia’s face, I’m ready for it.

I don’t like him.

For a moment, I’m almost intimidated again, but I can hear it now, the notes of petulance and fear in that voice . . . the voice of a father who blames me for his failures.

Fuck off. I like Dr. Culvington, I tell the voice.

You can’t handle whatever Mia is about to say. She’s leaving your worthless ass and you’re going to explode again, hurt her again.

I force the breath into my lungs, filling them slowly and carefully as I refute that and let it go, secure that Mia and I have withstood trials and will handle whatever is wrong now.

She rushes to me, shocking me as she hugs me tightly. Not that I’m surprised she’s doing it, but that she’s doing so in front of an unknown guest in my office. We’ve been decidedly careful about who sees any of our PDA. But I know who he is, so I hug her back, rubbing the knotted muscles along her spine. My heart thumps as she whispers in my ear.

“I know who’s doing it. Get him out of here. We need to talk. Now.”

I look down in alarm, my heart thumping for a whole new reason. “You know?”

She nods, and I see the certainty in her eyes but also pain. “Mia Karakova, let me introduce you to John Smithson of Smithson Security. He was just about to share with me what he’s found about the video, but perhaps you can share with us first?”

She shakes his hand but then looks at me sharply, silently questioning me if I want to air our company laundry this way. But I brought John in on this personally, and he’s had his team examining the video’s cyber-footprint as carefully as the FBI itself would.

She sees the answer in my eyes and goes over to my laptop, clicking some buttons as I sit down, giving her some space to work. “I need to remove any server access for this.”

“It’s all protected so that no one can get into my work. Shouldn’t that suffice?”

She shakes her head, talking into the monitor as she focuses. “Better safe than sorry. Easier in the old days when I could just yank the fiber line. So here’s what I found.”

She’s pulled up two files, splitting the screen into rows of data that make zero sense to me, but John leans forward, eyes scanning left to right, back and forth. He’s got a background in cyber security and can probably see what Mia’s saying faster than I can.

Mia paces as she speaks, like she needs the physical movement for her brain to function best. “I’ve been running data checks on unexpectedly low-performing projects like you told me to look into. I’ve identified several of interest,” she says, pointing at the left side of the screen. “There are others, but these seemed the most obvious outliers, where the profit margins or the way the project played out made the least sense. Like the Chinese buying the aircraft parts company. So, I had these, but the overlap between players, project team members, departments involved, et cetera, was just too big. And then I had a thought.”

“What?” I feel like this is her big build-up moment, but I’m eager to hear the results. “What’d you do to whittle it down?”

“Uhm, this isn’t exactly legit, and you didn’t ask me to go this far, be this intrusive, but I hope you’ll think the result is worth it.” I narrow my eyes at her, but John smirks as if he approves of whatever she’s done even before she explains. “Okay, so I thought weeks ago that it might be helpful to track people’s movements inside the company, both electronic and physical. I was hoping I might find some trend in someone being in the server files where they shouldn’t be, on a floor they shouldn’t be, or just weird comings and goings.”

She looks at me, a slight blush to her cheeks. “I swear, I’m not some stage-five clinger, Tommy. I wasn’t just tracking you. I was tracking . . . everyone.”

I feign a mad look, then wink. “Stalker,” I say. “Besides, maybe I’m one of those split-personality types.”

John misses the wink and only heard my rough voice, so he comes to Mia’s defense and corrects me. “Security.”

He looks up, recognizing he’s missed something, and realizes we’re sharing a private joke. “Can we get back to what you’ve found?”

Reminded of why she’s here, Mia resumes her pacing. “Yeah, of course. So, I’ve had that algorithm running for weeks, compiling loads of data. It’s like freakin’ terabytes worth. But then I realized, I didn’t need to know about weird floor access six months ago. I only needed to know who—”

John interrupts, “Who was on the twenty-fifth floor to record the video that one day.” Mia nods, and I can see that she’s pleased John understands where she’s going. “So, did you figure it out? Who was here?”

Mia gulps. “I did. But not only that. I got the list of who was on the floor that day, tracked if they’d exited and not returned, like Kerry. That gave me a shorter list of who was on the floor. But then I took that data and cross-referenced it with the project lists to see if anyone was on both lists. There were several, and I’ve been whittling them down, trying to figure it out.”

She bites her lip, tears springing to her eyes. “It’s Bill Radcliffe, my boss.”

I search through everything I know about the man. Former military, has worked for me for years, took a move a few years ago, said he needed less stress and more nights at home with his family, but that’s all I’ve got. He’s just not a big blip on my radar.

Honestly, the move downstairs is the only thing I remember because it was unusual. Most people who can’t cut it just move to another company. I normally even give them a letter of recommendation when they do.

“What? Why? Are you sure?” I ramble, not really questioning Mia’s work, because I know it’s above reproach, but just trying to make sense of it.

She nods, sighing. “I’m sure. I realized I was going about the project search wrong. It wasn’t the team members themselves who were the biggest suspect pool. It was who had access to the data. Bill filters every bit of data through himself as a supervisory measure for those he manages. He didn’t have to be on the project team. He could tweak the data itself to whatever he wanted. I found some server accesses that don’t make sense, but I suspect he’s running something sneakier to change the data. But that’s beyond my cyber skills. I’m an analyst, not a security specialist.”

I sag back in my chair, and Mia rushes over to sit in my lap. We hold each other for a moment. “I thought this was going to make me feel better, an answer to the puzzle, but this feels like shit,” she says quietly, and I realize just how much Bill’s actions have hurt her.

“I thought I was going to be mad as hell, rush out to kill someone or at least ream them, and I do want to do that, but mostly, I just feel confused,” I admit.

John clears his throat, drawing our attention. “Not to hit pause on your pity party or anything, but I’ve got some info too.” He looks to Mia, his eyes admiring. “First off, I’d like to say good work. The algorithms you thought to run, the data you slogged through, quite brilliant. And if you ever want to leave Goldstone, leave the corporate drudge and mill grinding behind, I’d have a place for you at Smithson.”

I growl dangerously at him, holding tighter to Mia. “Over my dead body.”

Mia pats my chest, chuckling. “Down, boy. Thank you, Mr. Smithson. But I’m good right where I am.”

He shrugs like I’m not about to rip his head from his body. Okay, I’m probably not because then I’d have to set Mia down, and I rather like her in my lap, patting me. But I still give him a harsh glare. We’ve been professional acquaintances for years, but I can always find another security firm if need be.

“I suspected as much, but I had to extend the offer. Just business, you know?”

He looks at me, not apologetic but as if to say you’d do the same thing. “So, I took a different approach to your issue, focusing on the video itself because most people aren’t tech savvy enough to erase all the markers. Actually, most people don’t even realize there are data markers on every picture and video you take with your phone. First, I had to get the video. No small feat because the media was not interested in sharing their source, no surprise there, and copied versions off the Internet did me no good. Let’s just say it took some work, but I got the original file and the email of where it was sent from.”

I don’t know what John had to do to get that access, and I suspect he wouldn’t tell me even if I asked, but I trust he did it willingly and smartly. That’s why he charges the exorbitant rates he does, because he’s good at his job and goes all in for his clients.

“Once I had the info, I had my guys check it out. For your protection and mine, I won’t share how we do that, but I tracked the phone back to one owned by Goldstone itself. It’s in my report. I assume you can match that up with your records. The email was a blank account, basically the online equivalent of a burner phone, but from the metadata, I got the IP address as well. I think between what I have and what Ms. Karakova has found, it’s pretty damning evidence. Prosecution might be a reach because explaining this to most juries is a crapshoot, but it’s definitely enough for termination of employment and likely a civil suit.”

John sets a plastic-coated folder on my desk, sliding it toward me. “Here’s everything I have. Let me know if you need anything further, on this or anything else.”

With a handshake, he’s gone, and it’s just Mia and me.

“What are we going to do?” Mia asks. “I’m in over my head here. I did the data work, but I don’t usually have this much invested in the results and what you do with them. But this time, I do. I just don’t understand why he’d do this.”

I squeeze her tightly, using her body to ground me and keep me from charging downstairs like a raging bull.

“You know, part of me wanted it to be Randall Towlee,” I growl lightly. “Since that thing in Portland-”

“I know,” Mia whispers. “He’s a jerk . . . but there’s a difference between being a jerk and being a traitor.”

Surprisingly, the urge to charge down at Bill, while definitely present, is something I can stave off. As long as Mia’s with me, I have that inch of control I need. But distance is probably a good idea until I work out just what I’m going to do with all this information.

“Let’s get out of here for a bit. Go to lunch or something.”

“Upstairs?” Mia asks, her voice soft and silky.

I press my lips to her forehead sweetly and grind my cock against her ass roughly as I groan. “Fuck, Mia. I want nothing more than to take you upstairs and use you to make all this go away. Just lose myself in your pussy and pretend none of this exists. But I can’t. I won’t use you that way. Not for our first time taking it back to that level. When we go there, I want it to be just the two of us. No drama, no voices, just you and me.”

She cups my jaw in her hand, looking up into my eyes. “You’re a good man, Thomas Goldstone.”

And another jagged piece of my soul sears over, the glass heating and reforming solid and whole. She is going to burn me to ash, but I want it because she’s putting me back together bit by bit with her love.

She pops off my lap, pulling me to stand beside her. “Come on, I know just what you need. We’re going to The Gravy Train and you’re getting the biggest, greasiest burger they have, a whole plate of fries, and a milkshake. It’s thinking food, and we’re gonna think this whole shit show through and figure it out piece by piece, analyze the fuck out of it. Because Bill might have thought he was fucking with Goldstone, but he’s fucking with my man. And Russian women, we don’t put up with that shit.”

She fake spits on the floor and mutters something, and in that moment, she is utterly beautiful. In all her weird streaky-haired, Russian-spouting, anime-loving, videogame-playing, metal-music-blaring, healing angel, avenging demon ways. I love this woman, and I will do whatever it takes to be worthy of the love she gives back to me so freely.